People Provide for Woman Left Unprotected by Government

The police and National Guard left her unprotected. But people voluntarily helped this Ferguson woman.

You know that a business owner pays lots of local taxes. These are supposed to cover things like police protection of local property.

But the police don’t compete to win contracts with business owners. They have an automatic regional monopoly. Businesses can hire additional protection, but they can’t stop paying for local police “services.”

The owner of a bakery in Ferguson, Missouri, said she is in awe of the support she received after rioters on Monday smashed the windows and damaged some kitchen equipment in her small shop.

Natalie DuBose, a 32-year-old mother of two, owns Natalie’s Cake’s & More at 100 S. Florissant Rd., which opened in early June. DuBose told NBC News Wednesday that baking and cake decorating have always been a passion, but they didn’t become a full-time job until earlier this year, when she finally saved enough to open her store.

“Everything that I invested, it came from me saving money through bake sales. Sometimes I couldn’t buy a pair of tennis shoes because I wanted to make sure I had enough money to buy a bucket of icing,” she said. “It was an investment all around. I always had to work at least two jobs. I never just had just one job because my dream was always to have my own bakery.”

And then it was subjected to riots and looting that the police did not protect her from.

DuBose said her heart sank when she surveyed the damage. “Hurt is the only word I could really describe,” she said. “I was like, ‘Wow, you guys really just didn’t care, you didn’t care, and this affects whether I can feed my children or not, and you just bust through the window with a chair.'”

A friend suggested she start an online campaign to raise funds to clean up and repair her bakery, but DuBose was taken aback by the response she got. By late Wednesday, the GoFundMe campaign raised nearly $200,000.

At the time that Newser.com reported, the amount had risen to $218,000!

That’s a great contrast between what free people do and what government does.